Thomson Reuters Corp. is launching a global effort to reshape its newswire service, beginning with the U.S., where it will sell a new product to newspaper publishers and broadcasters that provides more domestic news.

The information company will announce Tuesday the launch of Reuters America, a news service that will produce more coverage of events within the United States, expanding the Reuters newswire, which is known for its broad national and international coverage.

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The launch represents a multimillion-dollar investment for the company and the first step in its plan to offer more comprehensive domestic news services in markets around the world, as part of what it calls Project Apollo.

"We have an objective of helping the world's news media to find new, better, more efficient ways of doing our craft," said Thomson Reuters' president of media, Chris Ahearn. "It's tough out there. We think bringing this measure of scale, that can work across different countries and be truly global in nature, will benefit everybody."

Reuters news service, which employs about 3,000 journalists around the world, is also signing revenue-sharing partnerships with companies that provide niche content. Under these agreements, Reuters will distribute the content of specialty services such as sports coverage from Halifax-based Sports Direct Inc. and entertainment news from Examiner.com.

The company plans to continue to find such partnerships so it can provide more content under its single service, without having to invest, for example, in coverage of thousands of sporting events.

"Today we're announcing six [partners] In a year's time it could be 600," Mr. Ahearn said.

Domestic services for other countries under Project Apollo will be announced next year.

Tribune Co., which owns daily newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, has signed a multiyear deal with Reuters America, which will also involve what the company calls "embedded editors" - Reuters staff who work in a client newsroom to give the news service more information about what types of coverage are needed.

"It gives us some choice. It adds another source," said Gerould Kern, senior vice-president and editor of the Chicago Tribune. "We've historically used [the Associated Press] and AP is a news co-operative … Having Reuters as a partner means we could go into the free market and customize a package for us. That's what we did."

Tribune, which has been involved in a trial phase with Reuters America for a while, has centralized some of its news production, creating page layouts that can be inserted into its papers across the country. About 75 per cent of the content is written by staff at Tribune papers, and the other 25 per cent comes mainly from Reuters America. The company said it aims to capitalize on the Reuters partnership by selling the ready-made full-page and half-page "modules" of content to newspapers it does not own.

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